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Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion. The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.

Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

One of the most anticipated books of the year, Lahiri's first novel (after 1999's Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies) amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Hopscotching across 25 years, it begins when newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli emigrate to Cambridge, Mass., in 1968, where Ashima immediately gives birth to a son, Gogol-a pet name that becomes permanent when his formal name, traditionally bestowed by the maternal grandmother, is posted in a letter from India, but lost in transit. Ashoke becomes a professor of engineering, but Ashima has a harder time assimilating, unwilling to give up her ties to India. A leap ahead to the '80s finds the teenage Gogol ashamed of his Indian heritage and his unusual name, which he sheds as he moves on to college at Yale and graduate school at Columbia, legally changing it to Nikhil. In one of the most telling chapters, Gogol moves into the home of a family of wealthy Manhattan WASPs and is initiated into a lifestyle idealized in Ralph Lauren ads. Here, Lahiri demonstrates her considerable powers of perception and her ability to convey the discomfort of feeling "other" in a world many would aspire to inhabit. After the death of Gogol's father interrupts this interlude, Lahiri again jumps ahead a year, quickly moving Gogol into marriage, divorce and a role as a dutiful if a bit guilt-stricken son. This small summary demonstrates what is most flawed about the novel: jarring pacing that leaves too many emotional voids between chapters. Lahiri offers a number of beautiful and moving tableaus, but these fail to coalesce into something more than a modest family saga. By any other writer, this would be hailed as a promising debut, but it fails to clear the exceedingly high bar set by her previous work.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Poor Gogol. First he is deprived of a real name because his grandmother's letter gets lost in the mail, then he is forced to go through life with his "good name" or use name given by his father until the letter arrives. Unfortunately, the letter never arrives, and the grandmother dies. The boy is forced to move through life without a real name. As the first American son of a Bengali family, he straddles two worlds, never fully at home in either one. His periodic months-long visits to Calcutta with his family serve to unbalance him even more. No matter how much he tries, he cannot ground himself either in American or Bengali culture.

Lahiri is a master of exploring the experience of being torn between two worlds, at home in neither.

Wasn't sure how I would like this book. Not my typical read. Our book club selected this book for the month. What a great choice . The characters are so well developed. There are times you want to tell some of the characters to snap out of it and be grateful for your family. The storyline is one that makes you see the world differently. Reflecting is how I feel. One part just tore me up. Enjoy

is still a Rose. And Gogol, by any other name, is still Gogol. Although it takes him quite some time to figure that out.

I quite enjoyed this journey through one family's story. The gentle way time passed, the incredible amount of description provided that lets you really see and feel the environment and people, the daily wear of life. I would say this book is like a stream that meanders quietly down a path with a few bends along the way. It is not my usual genre (my books usually have blood or sizze in them!) but I was gradually enchanted and persuaded to appreciate this due to the wonderful writing and the emotion I attached to the characters. I felt real pain when certain events happened - and a keen sense of disappointment and loss. I don't want to give the impression it is a depressing story - although it has enough realism to keep it far out of the fantasy realm - yet the ups and downs of life happen as the characters go through school, jobs, friends.

Enjoyable. Not a quick read for me surprisingly - I really paid attention to each word and took a few breaks to digest the story. It felt like that is the way I was supposed to read it - more of a casual sipping than a full fledged devouring. I will pick up more by this author!

Such a well written book with nice character development, good flow of the story and lovely family & history. Interesting to see the play between characters and how their upbringing and culture played in their decisions. Liked how actions that were taken early in Gogol's life returned in the end to show him his paths. Thoroughly enjoyable read & author.

While Gogol is the central character in the novel, it is something of a character study of the parents as well. The name change is a metaphor for Gogol's evolution as an Indian-American wanting to be more of an American who is simply of Indian heritage. This is strikingly evident in his two main love interests who are like day and night. The writing is fluid and descriptive although sometimes oddly and awkwardly using passive present voice ("The book is seen by him as he turns around." as opposed to "He turned around and saw the book."). My main criticism, though, is the truly melancholy feeling about Gogol's relationships - whether it's with his father, his mother, his love interests - and how all of their stories end. I truly cared about the characters, but wished somehow things might have resolved in a more positive way. I'll push this from three and a half up to four stars for the wonderful insight of life of foreign nationals settling in America and the compelling storyline.

I agree with other readers who say that "The Namesake" didn't quite live up to the promise of "The Interpreter of Maladies." The novel is the story of Gogol, a first-generation American (named for his father's favorite author), but for me the sections that really stood out were those dedicated to his Bengali parents and their struggles to adjust to their new world in the United States. Ashima and Ashoke are easy protagonists to root for, and it's fun to watch them build a life for themselves and make a home. Their impressions of America seemed particularly keen. Gogol's story, on the other hand, feels almost like a trope - a third-culture kid who is embarrassed by his parents' old-country ways and just wants to fit in grows up and comes to appreciate his heritage. (Of course I think that's an important story, but it's not one that Lahiri tells with any particular zest.)

I was also a bit disappointed with the writing in this book. The plot relies much too heavily on catastrophe - over and over again, the characters are set on a new path when an unexpected death occurs. Flashbacks were frequent and seemed sort of a lazy way to tell the reader something that should have been mentioned much earlier. The ending, to me, felt maudlin and overstated.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the read, and I think it might make for a good book club selection - there's a lot to talk about from this story, and Lahiri delivers it competently.